Page 65 of Reaper and Ruin

I scratched behind his one good ear. “You just like drama, don’t you?” I eyed X. “Just like someone else I know.”

Harold gazed up at me, then closed his eyes, like the head scratches were the best thing he’d ever felt.

My heart cracked open wide. He was so ugly. And so mean. And I was already in love with him. “You’re coming home with me. We’re going to get you all the toys your black heart desires. And all the catnip. And you can sleep curled up in a ball at the end of my bed.

X popped up from behind the desk, hair disheveled, and gave me a wounded look. “What about me? Where am I going to sleep when I stay at your place? I draw the line at sharing pillows with something that would eat my eyeballs if I stopped breathing for thirty seconds.”

“You’re assuming he’d wait thirty seconds.”

Harold meowed sweetly.

“Great,” X muttered. “He’s plotting already.”

But as we walked out of the shelter—me cradling Harold like a baby, X keeping a cautious two-feet of distance between them—I realized something:

For a few minutes, I hadn’t thought about Nyah. Or the bodies. Or the killer.

Just me, X, and the world’s ugliest cat, starting a very weird family.

And somehow, that was everything I needed.

21

LEVI

Iboth hated and loved that I had to work. Loved that I got to spend the entire day at the shop, surrounded by other artists.

Hated I couldn’t be there with Violet when she was upset and needed me.

Though I had a phone full of photos featuring the ugliest cat I’d ever seen, along with Violet looking thrilled and X looking terrified, so I guessed she’d found a way to fill her time and keep her mind off Nyah’s sudden disappearance.

I wished I could say the same though. Maybe she had just gone back to her family. Maybe they’d forced her back. I didn’t know.

But all I could think about was Dax and how he must be feeling. How out of his mind he had to be, wondering where she was.

It just made me want to put a tracker on Violet, so I knew where she was at every minute of the day.

If someone took her from me, the way they’d taken Nyah from Dax… My stomach clenched at the very thought of it. I shook my fingers out, realizing they’d clenched into fists. I wouldburn the fucking world down for Violet. And I didn’t mean that in the poetic sense.

I meant it literally.

I was so fucking in love with her, losing her now would destroy me.

King leaned over my shoulder, studying the practice piece I was working on. “Watch those lines. They’re shaky.”

I nodded, agreeing with him. “I will. Sorry.”

“You’re good, Levi. But you gotta concentrate. Nobody wants a wonky outline.”

“Working on it.”

“Good.”

We both glanced over as the bell above the shop door tinkled.

Lynx walked in, all broad shoulders beneath a long-sleeved white shirt.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I knew his skin was covered in tats. Some were works of art he’d gotten before we’d been locked up, others the prison variety that looked like trash. I’d refused to let anyone near my skin while we were inside, but I think Lynx had craved the pain.